THE CRUMBS (FOR VANILLA CRUMB CRUSTS).
Two cups flour, ½ cup butter and lard, mixed, ½ teaspoonful soda and 1 cup sugar, rubbed together with the hands to form crumbs. Scatter these crumbs over the four pies.
These are not thick pies, but simply what the recipe calls them—vanilla "crusts."
Aunt Sarah sometimes filled the bottom crusts of two small pies (either cheese pie or plain custard) with a layer of fresh cherries and poured the custard over the top of the cherries and baked same as a plain custard pie.
Aunt Sarah might be called extravagant by some, but she always made egg desserts when eggs were cheap and plentiful, in the Spring. In Winter she baked pies and puddings in which a fewer number of eggs were used and substituted canned and dried fruits for fresh ones. In summer she used fresh fruit when in season, ice cream and sherbets. She never indulged in high-priced, unseasonable fruits—thought it an extravagance for one to do so, and taught Mary "a wise expenditure in time means wealth."